What is LARP?

Live Action Roleplaying is a type of game where a group of players each take on a role and must deal with challenges and situations that they will be confronted with. It could be compared to improvisational theatre, but there is no audience.

In some ways it is like a tabletop roleplaying game such as Dungeons & Dragons, but rather then taking place solely in the players’ imaginations or on a map, it uses a real place.

Activities that are dangerous or which require specialist skills are abstracted (for example, we shoot people with Laser-Tag and use puzzles to represent hacking past a computer’s security system) but in general if you want to do something in the game: You just try to do it.

If you have ever played a 'murder mystery evening', 'escape room', or 'paintball/airsoft' then the UKLTA flavour of LARP is like a mashup of all three in one, taking parts of each.

How does Laser Tag LARP differ from other LARP systems?

If you have LARPed before some aspects of our games will be very familiar, inter-person Roleplay and Problem solving are essentially the same, its only combat where things really change.

Roleplaying

Unless it is a strictly tactical skirmish game, roleplaying at UKLTA events is very much of the 'player-vs-environment' variety.

We have players who play the 'protagonists' and crew who play the 'antagonists' and 'supporting' characters. Typically there is little 'player-vs-player' activity although there might be some friction or factionalism.

Our game organisers set up mysteries to discover, criminals to arrest, foes to fight and problems to overcome.

While characters may have personal issues or complicated history, we do not typically explore deep emotional scenes or relationship drama, unless they arise naturally in play.

You should play what's in front of you and assume your character can do anything a competent example of that character could do, be that be a Doctor, Hacker, Scientist or Marine.

For some specific problems you might need 'bought' character skills, such as 'lockpicking' or 'science' to give your character access or information. Specific game settings will have slightly different rules, but broadly they're 'low rules' and don't have different levels: you can either attempt to pick a lock or not.

To help with creating tension in play, UKLTA game organisers will often include puzzles or tasks that players, as well as characters, need to unravel or overcome. These are not usually overly difficult but will require combinations of time, patience and insight.

If for any reason you cannot handle these, we don't want you to have a bad experience so please speak to a GM and you will be able to roleplay through how you resolve something.

Tactical combat

As an organisation born out of 100% tactical combat games, there is always an amount of tactical combat in our events, however there is no danger of being pummeled by latex weapons or being hit by a stray BB pellet at our events.

These origins also mean our games do not use mechanics or systems to represent combat/tactical skills. Additionally because most combat in our games is conducted at significant range, it would be impractical to use of calls or hand signals to signify 'stealth' or other such skills often found in traditional fantasy systems. People crewing our games do not expect players to be awesome action heroes themselves and will give players making fair attempts at things like sneaking etc. leeway. While there may be events with military characters, generally we do not attempt to go the extremes of Mil-Sim.

With a broad group of members we have some who prefer roleplay over combat and vice-versa. We try to balance both their needs and often organise games around having separate 'tactical' and 'roleplay' objectives so you can mostly avoid the other during an event. However non-combat characters will usually be drawn into combat situations at some point, but also combat characters will be expected to support and engage with roleplay focused objectives at other times.

In more roleplaying focused events, there may be restrictions on which weapons your character can use. For example you may need to 'buy' the skill to carry and use an assault rifle, while anybody can use a pistol.

We regularly organise 100% tactical combat skirmish games where players are organised into teams to achieve an objective such as attacking or defending a structure and so on. These games are clearly signposted as such. They are a great opportunity to practice the tactical combat elements found in our more roleplay focused events.

The Laser-Tag equipment we use keeps track of 'hits' in combat and most games have character generation options that allow you be 'tougher' or represent 'armour', depending on setting.

Once you are out of 'hits' in a gunfight, your sensor will let you know. Your character is almost certainly not 'dead', being out of 'hits' means you've run out of luck and one landed properly so you're 'down'. Once you are 'down' you should stop participating in combat or using non-combat skills. You can still interact with other people as if 'wounded', feel free to roleplay how badly depending on the situation. How wounded you actually are is determined once a character with suitable medical skills gets to you.

In most games there is little to no hand-to-hand combat, our usual rule is that if you are touched (not struck) by a LARP-safe weapon or touched by an aggressive 'monster' such as a Xenomorph you are 'down', as if you'd lost all your hits in a gunfight.

If you are crewing and playing a 'monster' you should be briefed by the game organiser but usually you are just trying to touch a player. You must never hit or strike somebody, even with a LARP-safe weapon, at our events.

LaserTag

UKLTA events use a variety of props, weapons and equipment, but the core pieces of technology we use are Laser-Tag sensors and weapons. They provide an effective, safe way to simulate ranged combat while allowing for special effects such as poison or regeneration in some situations. As few LARP systems in the UK use equipment like this it's worth devoting some time explaining how it works at UKLTA events.

Weapons can be anything from a tiny holdout pistol that fits in the palm of your hand to full size assault rifles, shotguns, sniper rifles and so on. Weapon range is not strictly tied to size, a pistol can have the same range as a rifle but it may not be as easy to aim. Generally bigger weapons do more damage.

As is common in LARP, people own their own Laser-Tag weapons much as they do any costume they wear but in our games this also applies to Laser-Tag sensors. If you are new to our games we have a number of loan sensors and weapons that you can make use of.

Sadly, there is no commercial Laser-Tag equipment still produced compatible with the UKLTA system but a number of people in the hobby either make equipment for sale or you can build it yourself with a little help.

Game Settings

The UKLTA runs games across a number of different settings and which ones are 'in vogue' tends to vary over time. Most of the games we run are modern day or science fiction but we do stray into other genres from time to time.

We are not prescriptive about 'official' settings, quite the opposite. One-off games or 'high concept' events are welcome, especially at Dropzone the annual anthology event. We also have a number of commonly used settings that make for easy narrative touchstones and many players will have appropriate costumes, props and in some cases recurring characters for them.

As the UKLTA does not have an official 'campaign' most games do not include any form of 'downtime' or character progression, events are considered standalone deliberately to allow players to drop in/out of things as they wish.